The subject matter discussed in the background section should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in the background section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in the background section or associated with the subject matter of the background section should not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the prior art. The subject matter in the background section merely represents different approaches, which in and of themselves may also be inventions.
In conventional document management systems, users access their documents stored in one logical storage space. A user of such a conventional system typically retrieves documents from and stores documents on the system using the user's own systems. A user system might remotely access one of a plurality of server systems that might in turn access the document management system. Document retrieval from the system might include the issuance of a query from the user system to the document management system. The document management system might process such a request received in the form of a query and send to the user system information about documents stored in the document management system that are relevant to the request. The ability to share documents among multiple individuals, the ability to provide the retrieval of accurate information relating the shared documents and the ability to deliver this information to the user system are desirable characteristics of document management systems in general.
Unfortunately, with conventional database approaches, while sharing files, after a first user downloads a file to the user system, the file may be subsequently edited by another user. This second user may update the document storage management systems with their edited version of the document. The first user may unknowingly open the document they downloaded to their user system and rely on its contents even though the contents may now be out of date. Conventional approaches frequently try to address this issue by allowing users to send emails or other messages to users when they update a file in the document storage management system.
Unfortunately, such conventional approaches suffer from the flaw that, when updating files in the document storage management system, users must select to send messages to a potentially large number of other users, many of whom will have no immediate interest in knowing that the file has been updated. Thus, these conventional approaches become cumbersome as the number of documents and users grow in the system.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide improved techniques enabling the tracking of changes in a document that is being shared by multiple users of the document management system.